Curious at what price point others offer tracking?

[randomgoodstradingpost]

I am curious at what price point other sellers start to make tracking mandatory. I live in Canada. I predominately sell trading cards. I have sold 100+ items with no issues, until recently, I had my first person file a claim against me. Usually I was shipping standard/economy charging about $2.50 around Canada with no problems. I have used tracking before for purchases greater than $50, but am thinking about lowering this to $30 based on the recent claim against me. I am wondering if any other users have a set price point where they make tracking mandatory to protect themselves. Should I keep it at $50, or is this too risky? 

I did end up settling the dispute with the buyer who made a claim against me. I sent him pictures of me mailing the product (I always record video and picture evidence). Next day, he magically received the card. 

[triber]

Personally my tracking standard is for $40 CA, I think it very much depends on your willingness to take a risk. I have had very few INR packages, but using tracking on higher priced items give me peace of mind.

[100milehowie]

Good idea, picture proof of shipping. Its a gamble shipping without tracking. I think most people are honest and Canada post has never lost any of my shipments. I will risk it when the item value is less than $25. So far, no undelivered claims against my recent account and none against my old account from years ago.

[recped]

I don't have any set "limit", if something I sell ships via Lettermail then I ship it that way.

That said, I rarely have anything over $50 that can be shipped First Class.

Having a low limit like $30 or $50 is not something I would choose, the difference in shipping cost is enourmous, instead of $1.94 one would be looking at $10 - $15 for Expedited with tracking.

That would be VERY expensive "insurance". I can't imagine many buyers of a $30 item would be willing to pay an extra $10+ given it does NOTHING for them, not even a faster service.

You would be better off raising your $2.50 regular shipping charge to $3.00, and using the extra 50 cents as a "cookie jar" insurance fund to cover the very rare lost item.

Obviously if you sold a very rare and high value card (Hundreds of Dollars) then a tracked service might make some sense for peace of mind.

In over 40 years of mailorder I have never had a domestic lettermail item go missing.

[clemowbooks]

All over the place.

Most of my items cost me little enough that a loss in transit doesn't hurt. When I refund $20, my actual costs are buying the item (usually a dollar), shipping costs (about $2) and fees (around $1.50) and the profit shouldn't be counted.

When I ship something expensive, which would be over $100 for me, I'm usually using Expedited . But I've sent twice that to a trusted repeat customer untracked with no problems.

[regs43]

I usually start to think about tracking around the $75 mark for sports cards. If someone buys a bunch of $3 cards and is a newer buyer with low feedback I might send it tracked and eat the difference (use the extra 25-50cents collected from previous buyers to fund this)

I usually use Registered Lettermail in Canada as it is cheaper then Expedited or Regular parcels these days (due to the fuel surcharge). No issues with that so far (2 years in), and no complaints from anyone having to go to the post office to sign for their pacakge. I also buy stamps on ebay from sellers offering discount postage lots to make this cost a bit less as well. Just makes for a nice colourful pacakge!

[flipistics]

In my media store I've been targeting $30 to $40, but that covers most of the things offered in that store. I've had 3 INRs in over 450 sales. One I'm positive was lost by Canada Post (I had 2 tracked packages also get lost at the same time and location, one as a seller and one as a buyer). The other two were very low value items that are unlikely to be a target of fraud. I suspect the brand of labels I was using combined with the small padded envelope size probably resulted in the label peeling up, sticking to something else, and then getting ripped off. I've since changed label brands and haven't had any more issues.

[ricarmic]

Mine is usually around $100, but sometimes $150 or more depending on the customer, country etc.

(Remember I'm in the "safer" stamps world). 

As a note, it is worth remembering that we REALLY remember and focus on the lost items. It is very important to be able to look at the big picture. Even take your last 6 months sales and compare to that how much you've lost count and $ wise in that same timeframe. Generally it is a surprisingly low number as a % or even count against number of items sent, yet every time we get one our emotional response is that the rate is terrible.

Here's a link to my annual "lost in the mail" results.....

https://community.ebay.ca/t5/Seller-Central/RICARMICs-Self-insurance-cookie-jar-statistics-to-end-of...  

The emotional response will tend to make us want to over-react and insure "everything" which doesn't for most situations make economical sense.

Hopefully it is easy math for you to do your sales vs losses compare for a few months, that will probably help you figure out what will make a good rate....

[reallynicestamps]

I have used tracking before for purchases greater than $50, but am thinking about lowering this to $30 based on the recent claim against me.

How many sales have you had in the last 12 months? 24 months?

How many INR claims have you had in that time?

If less than one percent of your transactions had any claims, you are at the retail average.

Sportscards can be a high fraud category, so you may feel more comfortable using tracking at a lower level than stamp dealers or sellers of costume jewelry.

The real problem is less "loss in transit" including scam claims, than the high cost of tracking. When it costs more than $10 to Register a domestic LetterMail item, the higher price we need to charge means fewer sales.

And that means that often we have to go commando, send without tracking and offset the occasional scam with more sales and lower postage costs.

[ilikehockeyjerseys]

Whether you charge tracking is purely an economic choice. You have to figure out if it is cheaper for you to eat the cost of INRs, or cheaper for you to eat the cost of tracking, which for the sake of this post we'll assume is an additional $9.

People will say, the customer pays for shipping, why would the seller have to eat the cost?

You can only sell an item for what it is worth. We'll assume you want to get the most money as possible for your items, and are pricing them at the highest point of what someone will pay for them. If a card is worth $50, someone will give you $50 for it. You will theoretically be able to sell the item for $50+free shipping, $48+$2 shipping, $39+$11 shipping. You cannot sell the item for $50+$2 shipping or $50+$11 shipping because in both of those cases the total cost of the item would be higher than the value of the item ($50), so it will be unlikely to sell.

This establishes that just like eBay fees, the cost of supplies, and the original cost of the item, shipping is an input cost the seller bears. Splitting the cost of the item and shipping or rolling shipping in with free shipping is purely a marketing or liability choice. Marketing meaning free shipping looks better and might get you a better spot in the 'best match' search. Liability meaning if you have a lot of standard returns you may want to charge shipping since it is usually not refundable in regular returns.

The above means the $9 for tracking is the equivalent to an insurance fee for you, the seller. You have to weigh the amount of losses you have in each category at each price point, and decide if it is cheaper too eat the occasional loss, or cheaper to pay $9 for tracking (insurance) to protect yourself from losses. In your case, it sounds like you should continue selling untracked, since you only had 1 loss in 100 orders. Even in that case, the buyer closed the case.

On a side note, it is entirely possible that the buyer was being honest. Someone scamming you won't care if you have a picture of the item being sent. No tracking means no proof. If they are bold enough to scam you over 20-50 bucks, they aren't going to get worried that you actually sent it. I would assume one of two things happened.

1 - The buyer believed you sent it because of the proof, felt bad and didn't want to wrongly steal from you. Told you it arrived, and they closed the case.

2 - It actually did arrive, and they closed the case.

Based on my experience with lettermail (close to 10k packages sent over the last 2 years), INRs are very rare. While there are blatant INR scammers, there are more scammers with tracked orders than with untracked because items sent tracked are usually more expensive. When an item gets delayed by Canada Post, it usually always arrives by the 30-40 day mark. I know this based on messages from buyers who contact me, and choose to wait before opening a case, or open a case but contact me later to pay me back after being refunded. So it is entirely possible with your buyer, there is some confirmation bias going on. You have economy shipping as your method, which means they had to wait something like 25+ days before they could open a case. Something that has been in the mail for 25+ days is extremely likely to be delivered shortly after a case is open because it has already been 25+ days. 

The worst delay I have seen is 40+ days in my own city. Keep in mind, I use a label printer and I format the address properly. So from a sorting POV, there wouldn't be a reason on my end why the package would have to be manually read. Delays seem to happen more frequently than lost mail.